


'Twas a Night in Devil's Hole

by Dawnwind



Category: Alias Smith and Jones
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-15
Updated: 2011-12-15
Packaged: 2017-10-27 09:29:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/294245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dawnwind/pseuds/Dawnwind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The gang indulges in some Christmas literary classics on a wintery night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	'Twas a Night in Devil's Hole

"'Twas the night before Christmas and…" Kid Curry hunched into the warmth and light of the hearth, holding the old book so close to the fire that it was in danger of becoming kindling. "All through the house, not a creature was stirring…"

"That be mah favorite part." Kyle Murtrey grinned around his chewing tobacco. He leaned back in his chair, his toes sticking through the holes in his socks. "Ain't never been in a house that didn't have no mice scurrying around."

"Kyle," Hannibal Heyes sighed from his comfy seat in the ladderback rocking chair. "I want to hear the rest of the poem."

"S'not like you ain't never heared this one before, Heyes," Wheat Carlson scoffed from the table. "You read it last year!"

"Tradition, Wheat," Kid said mildly, looking over at Heyes. A tradition he liked. There was so little of the Christmas he remembered from his childhood left up here, snowed in at Devil's Hole. No cider, no popcorn strung on thread to decorate the cabin. No gifts—not with this bunch of ruffians. No gingerbread or even carols sung sweetly into the dark sky to welcome the baby Jesus. "Don't you want something…Christmassy come December 25th?"

"I want a bottle of whiskey, to be holed up out of the snow and money in my pocket," Wheat said belligerently.

Everything he ever said sounded belligerent, Kid mused.

"Ah'd lihke a big ol' piece of apple pie dripping with cream and some of the corn mash mah grandpappy useter make," Kyle said with longing, licking his lips. He grabbed the bottle of rotgut from the table and splashed a generous helping into his glass.

Heyes smiled wistfully, staring out the window at the steadily falling snow. "Kid, do you remember Grandpa Curry getting out the old Bible after Christmas Eve supper?"

He could picture it more easily than anything he'd done in the last five years. The old man, with his twinkling bright blue eyes and white beard—much like the description of Santa Claus in Clement Moore's poem—would gather the grandchildren around his feet and hold up the family Bible. There'd be a scramble to get good floor space around Grandpa. With twelve Curry offspring and four Heyes children all stuffed into the little house, along with various parents, uncles and aunts, there was barely room to squirm.   
But Kid could still feel the joy of the night, the contentment of a belly full of roast chicken, mashed potatoes and current studded Christmas pudding, and the thrill of waiting for his Grandpa to read Luke 2:9.

"And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them," Kid said softly, Grandpa Curry's Dublin accented voice whispering in his ear.

"And the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid," Heyes continued, his eyes dark and unfocused, as if he too were listening to the old man who had died in the first years of the War Between the States.

"And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy," Wheat recited softly, the way a boy does in school, slightly halting and embarrassed.

Stunned that Carlson knew the passage, Kid closed the Santa Claus book in his lap, listening respectfully.

"Which'll be t'all people. For unta yew is born in th'city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord," Kyle finished up in his country drawl.

"Ain't no Santa Claus in that story," Wheat growled, ducking his head over his glass of whisky.

Kid could have sworn he saw the outlaw wipe away a tear. "Nary a one," he agreed, bidding his Grandpa goodbye. He might not attend church any longer, and he wasn't even sure he believed in some all-knowing God up in the sky condemning sinners and tossing them into hell. Especially because Kid had certainly done some sinning in his time, but the old story of two people forced to stay the night in a barn and deliver a baby into poverty, then lay him in the hay manger the cows had eaten from rang true in his hard-scrabble life.

"That's what Christmas is all about," Heyes said, raising a glass of Christmas cheer to the half moon riding high over the mountain tops. "Just a baby being born, and a time to be with whatever you can call family."

"We all be family!" Kyle held up his glass at just the right angle to catch the flickering light from the single kerosene lantern.

Kid felt a kind of awe as the light fractured into radiant beams, reflecting a golden array on the rough wall of the cabin. "Heyes and me have spent almost every Christmas together since we was born ourselves," he said softly. He toasted the other three men with his glass, lingering longest on the man he couldn't imagine life without. Heyes' dimpled mouth curved in merriment as he met Kid's eyes.

"Merry Christmas," Heyes said. "And to quote another literary character I'd like to read over again, God bless us, every one."

"Tiny Tim?" Wheat rolled his eyes, his mustache bristling. "Go back to reading about a white haired old man who breaks in by goin' down the chimney and leaves loot 'stead of taking it."

Kid guffawed, the others joining in. "Y'know, Wheat, I never thought of it like a heist, but you've got a point."

"Those reiny-deer be too noisy with their dainty hooves on the roof." Kyle snickered, staring into his glass as if he expected there to be more whiskey inside.

"He surely does wake up the household." Heyes chuckled. "I'd be able to come up with a far better plan than…"

"Read, Kid, before the most wanted outlaw in the west starts in on a plan to rob a house of sugar plums n' gee-gaws," Wheat said quickly.

"Where was I?" Kid opened the book, holding the worn pages to the fire so he could read the small print. "Oh, here we go…was stirring, not even a mouse. The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, in hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there…"

The End.


End file.
